March 11, 2008 | Tuesday

Rupert Murdoch isn’t too bothered about Yahoo

By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in News |Search Engines |Yahoo |Microsoft

I blogged almost one month go about the Rupert Murdoch angle of the Microsoft/Yahoo acquisition, and how he just might make a play for Yahoo himself.

While it may be true (we don’t know yet, but whispers say it is) that Murdoch’s News Corp has submitted a formal bid to Yahoo, word from the horses’s mouth is that no battle for Yahoo is on the horizon.

As reported by TechCrunch, Murdoch reportedly told investors:

We’re not going to get into a fight with Microsoft, which has a lot more money than us.

What’s striking about Murdoch’s statement is how blasé he is about the matter. Yahoo is clearly not viewed as a company worth fighting for by anyone but Microsoft. Does their CEO Steve Ballmer and his board know something about Yahoo that Murdoch and others who could afford to bid do not?

Duncan Riley says that Yahoo’s “last chance” at avoiding a Microsoft takeover is a bid from Time Warner which may or may not come. Talks have been held with AOL, which is not big enough to buy Yahoo outright. If anything happens there, a merger or joint venture will be the outcome.

But AOL has concerns of its own: They just fired Platform A president Curt Viebranz after only five months in the job. Platform A is in charge of ad sales for all areas of AOL, and Viebranz came to AOL after heading up Tacoda, which was acquired by AOL last year. Evelyn Nussenbaum reports:

Another AOL executive, Advertising.com president Linda Clarizio, will replace [Viebranz]. Advertising.com execs strongly opposed the Tacoda acquisition, saying Tacoda’s technology was overrated. Guess who just won that argument?

Smart money does not seem to be on AOL fighting for Yahoo, either. What does chief exec Jerry Yang have up his sleeve next to try and dodge Microsoft? Does Yang even have a plan? How much will resistance cost Yahoo in the end? All questions we’ll know the answers to eventually, but in the meantime, this is better than any reality show (if you’re a media and marketing anorak, that is - and if you’re reading this, chances are that includes you).